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Local Life
Al Dana: A Chestnut Hill/Middle Eastern food mystery One of the unfathomable culinary mysteries in Chestnut Hill is why so few of the customers at Al Dana II, the almost-nine-year-old Middle Eastern restaurant at 8630 Germantown Ave., are from Chestnut Hill. (Al Dana features one of the area's best culinary bargains with its all-you-can-eat $8 lunch buffet Tuesdays through Thursdays.) I personally have spoken to Chestnut Hill area residents who have never heard or read anything about Al Dana, and owner Maath Meri, 62, has definitely had the same experience. "I recently spoke to a woman who owns a business right around the corner," he said, "and when I told her about my restaurant, she said she did not even know it was here, although her business has been a block away for the entire nine years! . . . I just assume that most people in this area are not educated about Middle Eastern food." Without many Chestnut Hill area customers, how does a Chestnut Hill restaurant survive? "The large majority of my customers are Jewish people," explained Meri. "They come from Cheltenham, Jenkintown, Melrose Park, Rydal and the Main Line. They are very familiar with authentic, home-made Middle Eastern food, and they appreciate it. When there's a Jewish holiday, we do no business." As we were talking over lunch, a woman who overheard the conversation.... by DAN BUSKIRK After starting its season with the insightful domestic drama The Memory of Water, the Allens Lane Theater's season turns political with a production of Chicago playwright David Barr's 1994 debut, The Death of Black Jesus. Told on one spare set that mostly functions as the stage of an exploitive talk show, Robert Anu keeps the play's explosive tensions running high, but the effect is blunted by a script that, a decade old, is starting to lose the punch of its torn-from-the headlines plot. The Black Jesus referred to in the title is a thinly disguised version of the 1960s' radical group The Black Panthers. In the opening, we hear contemporary news reports that their charismatic leader, Bobby Wright (played in flashback with a preacher's intensity by the able young Richard Stevens), has died, shot down unceremoniously in an inner city crack house (much like Panther founder Huey P. Newton). A trio of former Black Jesus members gather to discuss the fate of the Black Nationalist movement on the talk show of Steven Schaffer Downs (Scott Edward Reid), but the divergent paths their lives have taken exacerbate the long-simmering conflicts... 'Butter' tasty theatrically for G'tn church audience by HUGH HUNTER The Drama Group is continuing its run of Spinning into Butter, directed by Wayne Snover and Robert Bauer. This widely acclaimed play by Rebecca Gilman is set in the fictitious Vermont college of Belmont. A crisis takes place when an unseen black student becomes the object of obscene threats, creating a crisis that college administrators attempt to resolve. (The play is at the First United Methodist Church, 6023 Germantown Ave. in Germantown.) The play brings us into this world of college administrators, a mix of sophistication and smallness. All scenes take place in the office of Dean Sarah Daniels (Darla Spence Coffey.) Principal staff consist of a pair of former lovers who remain friends: Professor Ross Collins (Wayne Snover) remains the confidante of ex-lover Sarah, while Dean Catherine Kenney (Patricia Pelletreau) informs us that she and Dean Burton Strauss (Bruce McNeel) were once an item. Their failed relationships enhance the aura of insubstantiality and fecklessness that hovers over them all. But the action squarely centers on Sarah, and Coffey is convincing in the role. As a woman of conflicting sympathies, she initially stumbles in her efforts to gain scholarship money for another minority student, Jennifer Chibas (Evette Pena). We feel a measure of support for Sarah as she fumbles around in search of politically correct language. In the second act, she confides to Ross in a long monologue the real reasons why she left the urban environment and moved to Vermont. She finds some black people loud, brash and rude, avoids blacks in public transit, and thinks black hair looks ridiculous. But the sympathy.... 'Cats' lacks real soul; making money is its goal by CLARK GROOME In days gone by on the Broadway stage Magnificent musicals were all the rage. There were shows about Joey, the pal, the cad, And about Pierpont Finch, a greedy lad. Nathan and Sky roamed Times Square While looking for action and a young lass fair. Then, to be sure, there was old Harold Hill Who wanted with music River City to fill. These shows all told stories about love and such And also tried our hearts and minds to touch. My Fair Lady, Fiddler and Sweeney Todd Had characters who loved and... Fine antiques for 40 years, some in major movies by PAT STOKES Two hundred and fifty years ago, the Boyd family arrived in Eastern Pennsylvania, along with other European entrepreneurs, cabinetmakers, innkeepers, artisans and a railroad developer, who joined to establish the great American free enterprise system in this area. Still alive and flourishing is Boyd's legacy, Meetinghouse Antiques, 509 Bethlehem Pike in Ft. Washington. Heading out the Bethlehem Pike, not long after you pass Hope Lodge on your right, slow down and put on your turn signal. When you see the sign, Boyd's Antiques, take a sharp right up a long driveway. The first house you see, the white one, was the original Whitemarsh Friends Meetinghouse. The Boyds' daughter, Priscilla, greets me on the drive and we enter the second building, the main shop, which is full of 18th century pieces in the "hardwoods" -- cherry, maple, mahogany and walnut. Other buildings on the drive house the "soft woods" -- 18th century furniture made from pine and poplar. Surely this is the place to mention that the family is very much a part.... |